


Again

by indefensibleselfindulgence



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Monsters Falling In Love, Other, Slow Burn Lite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 07:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16760542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefensibleselfindulgence/pseuds/indefensibleselfindulgence
Summary: They find their way to the couch halfway through the statement. It presses down on him this time, legs tangled in his own, long and light and wrong. He thinks before the Stranger's failed ascension he would be more upset by this. By being this close to something that wasn't human.There's comfort in the wrongness.





	Again

**Author's Note:**

> its like a fast slow burn get it we hit all of the beats but its a chapter long;;;
> 
> not beta'd

His body still doesn't feel right.  
  
Even two weeks down the line, the bend of his muscles is awkward, and his weight is placed oddly when he walks. His head is fuzzy, and his eyesight is fuzzy, everything is fuzzy lately.  
  
To say nothing of the mounting ever-present hunger.  
  
It's horrific to think about, but it's always there now, just at the edge of every thought, every action, it's gnawing, and there's no one to turn to.  
  
He does his statements, but it's not the same. The paper doesn't feed him the way he wants it to anymore. He gives the papers to worried little Martin and hounds Peter Lukas for anything to take the edge off. Peter Lukas smiles and shrugs and tells him to find someone with a living statement.  
  
It's not like those people just walk in every day.  
  
It's not like he can pound on someone's door for a story.  
  
There's a long solid block of time where he legitimately considers searching for Jude Perry again. Health and safety be damned, he just wants anything for a good meal. Anything to get The Eye to leave him alone for five minutes.  
  
He lays in bed in his apartment on the weekend, counting the grooves in his ceiling, trying to talk himself out of bothering the Lightless Flame. He spends a lunch in a crowded cafe waiting for anyone to come up and talk to him, give him an excuse to ask a few questions. He rides the tube around begging for some Buried to come alone and put him in the ground where he should be in the first place.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Nothing nothing nothing other than the agonizing hunger for information that doesn't leave him no matter what he does or who he begs.  
  
That's how it finds him, desperate in his office.  
  
Helen looks at him with pity that nauseates him to his core.  
  
Jon is ready to get on his knees and beg for a statement, forgetting its hands, forgetting the door inches away, forgetting everything other than Michael's helpfulness and Helen's desperation for company.  
  
“Please.” He whispers because he's shaking like a starving monster and when it looks down at him and holds it's hand out Jon takes it readily.  
  
There's a knock at the door, at his real office door, that sounds like it's getting louder and angrier, that serves as nothing but incentive to let Helen lead him by his bleeding arm through its corridors.  
  
The hunger is gone.  
  
He slumps against the door and the thing that isn't Michael, isn't Helen, isn't anything at all hovers by him while he catches his breath and finally finally finally gets on his knees, forehead pressing into the stained carpet, and apologizes.  
  
He has nothing else to offer.  
  
When he's lead out there is his flat: Jon's steps first, and monstrous flesh turning into elegant, expensive heels second.  
  
The hunger feels like it's mounting again- ugly and present and he hates it he hates it he hates it until Helen takes his hands in its own, cutting him like lace and ribbons, and it gives him a statement.  
  
It tells him the story of The Layer Of Clay and Jon is sobbing by the end of it, body pressing against a hollow body, skin being cut where Helen holds him. It's words don't feel real. The apartment doesn't feel real. Nothing but the contact between them feels real.  
  
There's a burn in the back of his mind that he doesn't care about when he thanks it again and again and again.  
  
It tells him it feels good too, spending time with him feels good, feels real and solid and so antithetical to itself.  
  
“But good?” He mumbles, face pressed against skin that doesn't feel like skin in the crook of its neck.  
  
“But good.” It tells him.  
  
So they do it again. 

  
…

  
“Now, I'm just confused as you are how Elias managed not to mention this little thing you have with The Spiral because he is a dreadful gossip.”  
  
Peter's office, as much as it is Elias' office, has never been a particularly comfortable place. But Jon knew he could get away with more if Elias was the one sitting behind the desk frowning at him. But Peter isn't the Watcher. Peter Lukas is a different nightmare entirely.  
  
“Maybe he'll write to you from prison.”

Elias apparently got in a prison fight lately. And got his phone privileges taken away. Jon's grateful for the quiet.  
  
“Cute.” He says. “Keep that thing out of the Archives.”  
  
“I can't tell it what to do.”  
  
Which is maybe a little bit of a lie.  
  
“You're going to try,” Peter says, coming around the desk. He's taller than Elias. He towers over Jon now. “Martin and I are going fishing over the weekend. Plenty of time to tell him all about your tryst with the thing that tried to kill him.”  
  
“That's a lazy threat.” He says, and Peter smiles.  
  
“Listen to me, Archivist.” Peter Lukas leans down until he's inches from Jon's face and smiles. “If you're too stupid to see that it's trying to steal you from the Eye, that's fine. I don't care enough to try and stop you from letting it. If anything, even with Elias' desperate pleadings to the contrary, I encourage it. Do you want to know why?”  
  
“Why.”  
  
“Because you are the last thing keeping poor worried Martin in this basement. Because if you go through a few too many doors, Martin's going to lose hope is his Archivist. And Martin is going to come home with me. Do you understand, Archivist?”  
  
Credit where credit is due, that's a better threat.  
  
“Martin isn't stupid enough to-”  
  
“No, he's not. He's not stupid at all, Archivist. But, the poor little lamb is so lonely it almost hurts _Me._ Almost.” He moves away then, tired of posturing apparently. “You know, I like him a lot more then I thought I would. He looks so pathetic, but then you get him to talk about anything other than you, and he just becomes something beautiful.”  
  
“What's Elias going to say?”  
  
“Elias doesn't care about Martin. Elias only cares about you. Well.” Peter waves a hand and sits down. “But why appeal to you about his feelings when you're so much more protective about your assistants. What few you have left, anyway.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
The wound of Tim's death still felt raw. The guilt he feels now that he's not been devoting enough time to remembering him feels agonizing.  
  
“And, for what it's worth. I hate that thing.” Peter says, picking up the small alarm clock on the table and twisting it around in his hands. “You'll be doing three people a favor if you keep it out of the building.”  
  
“It's not like I can just tell it to go away.”  
  
“Sure you can. I recommend you figure out how you're going to do that beforehand.”  
  
“For Martin's sake.”  
  
“Mmhm. Look at it this way, if you decide to make your bad choices regardless of my warning you, I'll save you a seat at the wedding.” 

  
…

  
  
“You don't get along with the Lonely?”  
  
They're in his apartment, Helen just stepping through its door, and waiting a few seconds while its body adjusts to a more stable reality.  
  
“Not particularly.” It tilts its head in the way that Michael did whenever Michael found Jon doing something stupid. “Is it bothering you?”  
  
“Peter Lukas doesn't like you.”  
  
“I have no fondness for the man myself.” They both know how Distortion ended up looking the way it does now. How it's ascension was ripped away from it. “Is he threatening you?”  
  
“No more than usual. No more than anyone else.” He says.  
  
“He knew what he was doing.” It tells him. “When he brought Michael to me.”  
  
“It sounds that way.”  
  
Helen's dark hair goes a little sandy blonde in the roots, and her brown eyes get a little lighter, and Jon doesn't mention it.  
  
It's probably aware as is.  
  
“Do you need another statement, Archivist?”  
  
Jon thought he was hiding the tremor in his hands better than last time.  
  
“If- if you don't mind.”  
  
“I don't mind. Because you are a very skilled Archivist.”  
  
They find their way to the couch halfway through the statement. It presses down on him this time, legs tangled in his own, long and light and wrong. He thinks before the Stranger's failed ascension he would be more upset by this. By being this close to something that wasn't human.  
  
There's comfort in the wrongness.  
  
A familiarity of Michael and Helen and Distortion.  
  
It tells him about the others, the ones who still haven't found their way back with a hint of something that could be sadness, perverse and drowned under layers of self-importance.  
  
He can cry for it.  
  
Helen's fingers wipe tears away from Jon's face and leave symmetrical scars on his cheeks.  
  
The hunger ebbs away partway through, but Jon is never one to interrupt a statement. When it comes to a close, they can cry for things he can't understand untethered from his god's expectation. Helen's tears don't feel real, it's body doesn't shake with the sobs as Jon's does, Helen doesn't take deep breathes or get a runny nose.  
  
Just tears dripping in some weird show of empathy that Jon's pretty sure it can't even control.  
  
He has people to mourn when he cries.  
  
Sasha and Tim and Gertrude and Leitner and Gerry and Daisy and Michael and Helen.  
  
It has things to mourn for too.  
  
“Again?” It asks when they finally manage to pull away from each other hours later.  
  
“Again.” He says because he hasn't felt better in weeks. 

  
...

  
  
“Are you paying attention?” Melanie's voice jolts him awake, and when he refocuses on her, she must catch the moment because she groans and throws the folder down. “Get Martin to explain it to you.” And with that, she stomps out of the office.  
  
Fair, he thinks, picking up the folder and heading out after her to find where Martin's gotten off too.  
  
“You really think so?” That's Martin's voice outside of Peter's office. “You're- You're not just saying that because-”  
  
“I'm not just saying that because I'm making fun of you.” And that would be Peter.  
  
Jon wishes he could see inside as Elias could, but if he crosses the open door, one of them will see him and then he's going to have to deal with that too.  
  
“It's just- I mean it's early work.”  
  
“It's not as nuanced as the stuff you write now, sure, but it's still sweet. Evocative.” Martin laughs in that light way that Tim once told him Martin only did for Jon. “Really,” Peter says, voice dipping low that sends Martin into another fit of laughter.  
  
“You're setting me up- I know you're setting me up.”  
  
“Listen, if I was setting you up, why did you read it to me anyway?”  
  
Are they- Is Peter Lukas actually interested in Martin's poetry?  
  
Is Martin still writing poetry?  
  
“I- I don't know. No one's ever asked me about it before. I mean- Sasha did but...” He trails off, and Jon thinks maybe he should clear his throat when he hears Peter's chair scrape against the floor while he gets up.  
  
Some shuffling and then-  
  
“I'm sorry for your loss Martin.”  
  
“N-No ones actually. Said it. Yet.”  
  
Jon looks at the folder in his hand.  
  
“What was she like?”  
  
He sounds sincere.  
  
Jon leaves before he can hear the rest of it

  
…

  
  
“I think I'm going to lose my assistant.”  
  
They meet outside, in a coffee shop. It's shockingly pedestrian for them, but Michael met Sasha in a coffee shop, and Jon met Jude at a coffee shop, so. He doesn't see the issue. He can see Distortion's body through the glass reflections of the store, and it still gives him a headache.  
  
Not a migraine, though. Just a headache.  
  
“Just one?” Jon ordered for both of them, brought both of their mugs over to a corner table. More of Helen's roots are blonde today.  
  
“Maybe all three.” He says and drinks whatever he ordered. It isn't good. “Martin's probably going to marry Peter. Melanie's going to kill someone and Basira-”  
  
“I'm sorry.” It says in the same way it says everything else.  
  
“The worst part is that I don't think I care. I'd rather they just be happy somewhere else.”  
  
“You think you could be happier somewhere else too?” Helen asks quietly, pointedly, and Jon sets the cup down to touch the thin scar lines on his face.  
  
They don't talk for a while.  
  
Helen stares out the window at the people walking by. Her eyes get darker as time goes by, even if her hair doesn't.  
  
“I'm the Archivist right?”  
  
“A very good one.” It says.  
  
“Leaving is going to hurt me, isn't it?”  
  
“Most people don't switch.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Gertrude would have been a good Hunter.” It tells him. “And your assistant will be miserable with the Lonely. In the right way. And the angry one should be with the Slaughter.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And you're a good Archivist.” It sounds resigned. “You wouldn't fit us.”  
  
“Too many questions?” Jon tries to joke, but it doesn't laugh. For the best, probably.  
  
“Questions are fine. It's the answers you expect to come where the ideologies split.”  
  
“Oh.” He says and drinks more of his bad coffee.  
  
When he looks up again, Helen is gone. 

  
…

  
  
“Do you like him?”  
  
“Excuse me?” Martin's voice shoots up, and that's enough.  
  
“Peter Lukas.” Jon clarifies. “He kills people.”  
  
“Who doesn't,” Martin says and immediately looks guilty about it. “I- I don't know.”  
  
“You like me. Liked me.”  
  
“I-”  
  
“Do you like me?” He pulls.  
  
“Yes,” Martin says, and now the guilt is firmly in Jon's court.  
  
“He's going to propose to you.” He says instead of an apology. “Don't say yes.”  
  
“Are you-” Martin scratches his hand nervously. “Did you see it-”  
  
“No. He told me he was going to. Don't say yes.”  
  
“I'm not- I'm not going to.”  
  
“When he-” Jon swallows because there's no nice way to say it. “When he's flirting with you, he only does it so you'll be lonely.”  
  
“I know.” Jon looks up. Martin stares at him. “Obviously.” He's not stupid. Jon knows he's not stupid. He doesn't know why this is such a surprise to him. “I didn't know he was going to propose but- I'm- I can tell what he's doing to me. I can feel it.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Really, Jon. Don't worry about me. If you're going to worry about any of us you should probably worry about Melanie.”  
  
“I know- I'm sorry Martin.”  
  
“We'll get over it. Like we got over the rest of it.” He reaches out to hold Jon's hand.  
  
Human contact upset him more then he thought it would.  
  
“Yeah.” Jon doesn't pull his hand back.  
  
“We're you going to go?”  
  
“Go?”  
  
“To the wedding?”  
  
“Oh. He- Yes.”  
  
Martin just laughs. 

  
…

  
There's no agonizing hunger, no great motivator to see the Distortion, especially after their last awkward meeting. But he meets with it anyway.  
  
He's trying to be less selfish, and maybe it's a little late for that, but he should help someone.  
  
They meet at an aquarium.  
  
It was Basira's suggestion.  
  
He sits in front of the largest tank and watches dozens of fish swim around each other. He feels the brush of Helen's coat against his arm when it sits down next to him and stares up at the fish too.  
  
He doesn't expect to find comfort in its silence.  
  
It tells him about Sannikov Land in a quiet whisper while children shriek at their parents about the colorful animals. Jon's hand rests on its while it talks. Someone tells their child to leave the nice couple alone when a kid almost crashes into them.  
  
It makes his face warm.  
  
When it finishes its statement, Jon asks if it wants to spend more time together.  
  
It says that it would like that.  
  
Jon leads it by the hand. 

  
…

  
  
“I don't know why I'm surprised.” Elias' voice comes grainy across the line.  
  
“I didn't know you got your phone privileges back.” His office is dull now that he's learned how to control himself. No agonizing reminders of humanity that once was. Just a before and a present. Like every other person on the planet.  
  
“You get into one fist fight, and the entire facility shuts down.” Elias sighs into Jon's ear, and Jon can do nothing but roll his eyes. “Is Peter playing nice?”  
  
“He's trying to marry my assistant. But other than that.”  
  
“Martin? Really? I guess”'  
  
“Why did you call me.” Jon tugs at the bandages on his left hand. “We both know you don't need to.”  
  
“I want to. I barely have time to watch you since you're with that thing all the time.”  
  
“That thing is, once again, more helpful than anyone here ever is.”  
  
“Jon, Really? You're really not getting it? It's being nice, so it'll shove you through its door and wear you like Orsinov tried to.”  
  
“I'm going to hang up Elias.”  
  
“That's your choice.”  
  
He hangs up.  
  
The phone rings two seconds later.  
  
He doesn't answer. 

  
…

  
It has a lot of stories to tell him and despite everything, Jon still has a lot of unmarred skin left.  
  
He doesn't know how they end up in bed together, its hands pressing through him, but there's comfort there. More comfort than he imagined there being. Helen's body doesn't feel like a body, but it feels like what Jon deserves, and he finds himself rubbing and clutching and playing with skin that isn't human.  
  
He can't tell if it gets any sexual gratification from his contact, but he knows that it likes spending time with him and that this just feels like a natural progression.  
  
There's longing in both of their touches.  
  
Jon's never felt like this before, so needed and so appreciated.  
  
They do it again, of course, they do, but the first time sears into his mind.

Dark, fully dark hair splays on the bed sheets that were white once. Now they're dotted red with him.

Helen smiles and Jon has no choices but to smile back. 

He isn't hungry anymore.

His hands don't shake anymore.

He's the Archivist and it's the Distortion.

And there is nothing but comfort in being inhuman together.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always encouraged and very very very appreciated
> 
> please [talk to me](http://iamalivenow.tumblr.com/)


End file.
